Relational ecology: Thomas Aquinas and the metaphysical connection
What do a cow, a human being and the ozone layer have in common?
Surviving in America: Race, assimilation and 19th-century Catholic immigrants
Race, assimilation and 19th-century Catholic immigrants
Somewhere, a Unicorn : Missionary notes from the 17th century
A book came my way a few months ago, a literally weighty tome of almost seven pounds, quarto sized, two and a half inches thick. The book is The Codex Canadensis and the Writings of Louis Nicolas, a beautiful, scholarly work with 555 numbered pages of text and illustrations. I found it through a Goo
Life Cycles: Understanding the connections between the land and the body
Our painful attempts to live a fulfilling sexual existence could be helped by a consideration of the world of agriculture. This idea is hardly novel, and it owes much to that fine essay by Wendell Berry, “The Body and the Earth,” but I think we have yet to tease out the essential connect
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
On my desk at America Media headquarters sits a sealed glass bowl containing some dark, hardened soil from the tract of land my family tilled for more than two centuries in County Galway, Ireland. This is unsurprising, I suppose. When I try to count back through my 13 predecessors as editor in chief
Letters
Reply All
Editor’s Note: This week’s Reply All section is dedicated to the many thoughtful responses to “After Obergefell" (Editorial, 7/20).Humility and Truth-TellingI found much prudential and sensible pastoral exhortation in America’s editorial on the Supreme Court decision reg
Editorials
Selling the Unborn
A series of undercover videos has brought renewed attention, in chilling and often gruesome detail, to a seldom discussed aspect of the abortion industry.
Faith in Focus
American idyll: Catholic Worker and reality T.V.
The reality of building community
The very gate of Heaven: Looking for God with my 4-year-old daughter
“Where is my home?” I assured her that her home was with us, right here, forever. Two years later, we stood before a judge in a wood-paneled courtroom and she officially became our daughter.
Ideas
Is Louis C.K. the new St. Augustine?
St. Augustine was a comic genius. Is there a funnier one-liner in all of theology than his prayer in the Confessions, “Lord, give me chastity, but not yet”?
Books
Faith Lost, Talent Found
‘Eugene O’Neill,’ by Robert M. Dowling
Fear of Modernity
‘Are Non-Christians Saved?’ by Ambrose Mong
The King’s Man
‘Thomas Cromwell,’ by Tracy Borman
Poetry
On the New Physics
I/Blaise Pascal“The silence of these infinite spaces frightens me:The dark dissolves to numbered points and emptiness.I’ve tried to write of it, but the imploding blank Swallows what words I speak, absorbs the light I seek.I prayed. I knelt, but the rings round the plafond shr
The Word
Jesus – the law made flesh
A reflection on St. Paul’s complex teachings regarding the Torah and Jesus’ own words
Subjects, Not Objects
Ancient Roman society was profoundly hierarchical and this can grate on readers today when they encounter certain biblical passages Prime among these are ancient household codes which delineate the duties and responsibilities of family members to one another Part of the purpose of these passages
Columns
Iranian nuclear deal debate reflects lack of diplomacy
American leaders regard belligerence rather than persuasion as the key to peace.
Current Comment
Current Comment
Deal-Breakers in Congress; Killer Robots; Climate Talk in 2016
Of Other Things
Freeing the Sacred Self
To what extent is the autistic person in possession of an autonomous self?
Signs Of the Times
Bishops Support Minimum Wage Hike
U.S. Catholic leaders have called on Congress to ensure that the federal minimum wage is raised to “improve the financial security of millions of American families.” In a letter, dated July 28, Bishop Thomas Wenski, chair of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human
Planned Parenthood Protests in 65 Cities
As hidden-camera videos of Planned Parenthood staff strategizing to market fetal tissue and organs continued to be released on the Internet, rallies took place in 65 cities across the nation. Pro-life advocates from across the Salt Lake Valley in Utah demonstrated peacefully in front of a Planned Pa
News Briefs
Concerns about a potential humanitarian emergency were mounting in late July as people of Haitian descent began to be forced out of the Dominican Republic and into tent cities along the border with Haiti. • A decision by the Boy Scouts of America on July 27 to allow gay troop leaders and employ
Court Challenges Family Detention
Immigration advocates hailed a court ruling on July 24 that could mean the end of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy to lock up families in compounds run by for-profit prison companies while they pursue asylum and other types of protection from deportation.Judge Dolly Gee of the Central C
Making Room for All at Mass
If you attend Mass in Chicago, you might encounter a blind lector reading the day’s Scripture from a Braille lectionary while accompanied at the altar by a guide dog. You might receive communion from a eucharistic minister seated in a wheelchair. Through the SPRED (Special Religious Education)
‘Between Hammer and Anvil,’ A Humanitarian Crisis in Europe
A Ukrainian bishop said a Russian-backed separatist rebellion has plunged his country into its worst humanitarian crisis since World War II. He warned that “millions of refugees” could soon head for Europe to escape starvation.“Huge numbers are now caught between hammer and anvil;
Secret Catholics at Jamestown?
A reliquary discovered in the grave of Gabriel Archer, a founding member of Jamestown has raised the possibility that there were crypto-Catholics among these early settlers. David Collins, S.J., associate professor and director of doctoral studies in the history department at Georgetown University w
Vatican Dispatch
Man of the People
Pope Francis is convinced that the Holy Spirit is active in popular movements.
Politics
Faith
Culture
Vatican
Scripture
Podcasts